


Into the Wild

by catcher in the light (journeycat)



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Being Yourself, F/M, NPC - Freeform, Romance, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/journeycat/pseuds/catcher%20in%20the%20light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only a man who can embrace his own wild heart will understand that he cannot tame hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Wild

The hunt was on.

Beneath her bare feet, the earth was damp and soft, giving way to her firm and fleeting steps. Wet leaves stuck to her soles and flew up behind her, a whirlwind to mark her path. All around her the late afternoon sunlight streamed through the trees and turned this wood into something golden and auburn and wild, something like her. She was filled with it and pumped her legs harder. Her muscles burned and her breath came out in ragged gasps, and there was a stitch in her side, but oh how lovely it was when the scenery flashed by in a blur. The animals called warnings as she raced by; they knew who she was, as they knew her pursuer.

She was Aela the Huntress, Aela the hunted.

Her bow and arrows were gone and she had just come from her beast form, but its blood still pulsed through her veins and gave her the gift of superhumanity, above and beyond the rest. It made her feet surer and her heart stronger—it made her feel _invincible_ , and oh how lovely it was to feel so immortal. To feel the air on her bare skin as she emerged fresh from a transformation, body trembling from the remnants of the beast, the snarls in her hair and the lingering wildness in her mind—she could understand why too-soft-Farkas and Vilkas who revered Kodlak would not embrace this. It took someone like her, someone naturally fierce, to tame this untamable power.

An arm wrapped around her waist. They tumbled in the leaves, rolling with their momentum. Aela tasted dirt and leaves and maybe blood. She must have bitten her tongue.

She was Aela the captor, Aela the captured.

"You can't outrun me," Skjor whispered in her ear. His breath was hot against her face. "I will always catch you, Aela, wherever you run."

He didn't let her reply, but grabbed her face with a hard hand and kissed her with a hard mouth. There was a wildness in his face and the taste of beast on his tongue, metallic like a sword and coppery like blood. _It takes someone like me_ , she thought, her hands cupping the back of his head. His shorn hair felt like goose down. _It takes someone like Skjor to love the hunt in Hircine's name, just like me_.

Only Skjor loved his beast blood, and that meant he loved hers, too, and oh how lovely it was to be herself. That was why, for Skjor and Skjor alone, did she allow herself to become the hunted and the captured, because it was only with him that she became Aela the lover, and Aela the loved.


End file.
